The real Christian Terrorists

As I have mentioned before, I was well churched growing up in SC. I had to go and more than once a week. Although I did woolgather, I also did listen and absorbed a great deal of what was said and quoted as gospel. I hear what is said now by many people who profess to be Christians, and I believe that we were in alternate universes or something.

These people who are so fervently religious and attend church as much or more than I did are saying and doing things that run counter to almost everything I ever learned about Jesus. They drag out their Bibles along with their Tea Party Manifestoes. Worse still are those who don’t believe in the Tea Party creeds, but go along to hold on to or get into some position of power. I suggest they tear out the New Testament before they wave those Bibles at anyone.

The number of times Jesus just mentions the poor is in the hundreds. Here is a link to nine of his quotes on the subject:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15...Luke_62021
The people who are tearing down the safety net for those who are without or need help are polar opposites of Jesus. They wouldn’t know him if he bit them on the butt. They are also the people who you will find in the pews listening to others who wouldn’t know him either. My purpose in starting with this subject is not to convert anyone or to malign those Christians who do try to help. I am tired of the ‘Leviticans’ hiding behind and using a religion that they don’t even practice to make themselves look important and Godly. They know who they are, and so do you.

This meander brings me to the subject of terror. Terror doesn’t just come from the barrel of a gun or an explosive. Those are the loudest and outwardly the scariest forms of it. They create the shadow of terror which is fear. Where you find one, you will find the other. There is a lot of quiet terror that ravages people all the time.

There can’t be many things more terrorizing than nothing to eat, nowhere to live, no help when sick, and any number of things. These conditions ravage the body and the soul unremittingly. They also do the most damage when they snuff out hope. If people have any spark of hope, they will hold on through the most unimaginable problems. People will invent hope, but nobody can live without the real thing forever.

In addition, that hope must move into good works to move those without into better places and lives. Some can manage to do it without much aid, but too many need a hand. They don’t want to beg or get a handout. They want a hand up so they can begin to walk what will be a long rough road. Once they can start to walk again, many will make it to a better life.

Those good Christians who are savaging the safety net are shutting down or lowering any voices that speak for those who can’t or are not heard. Most of them probably don’t think they know anybody like that, and they don’t care. I wish I had a huge bully pulpit. I would give a “come to Jesus sermon” that would ring from every corner of this land. You and many others might not agree with me, but at least there would be something being heard besides the shite that is shouted every minute that goes unchallenged.

The worst of it is that we are raising generations of children with no hope or who are being raised not to help others. I don’t remember Jesus asking anybody how or why they are in such dire straits. I also don’t remember him demanding any form of ID. He held out his hand to hold them. Unless we change, we will have a nation of hollow children and hollow people.

T.S. Eliot wrote a poem is entitled “The Hollow Men.” It perfectly describes the people we are becoming and the world we live in.
The Hollow Men
Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy


I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
Read the rest because it describes our situation: http://allpoetry.com/poem/8453753-The_Ho...T_S__Eliot

I call them Christian Terrorists because they are frightening people every day with threats or carrying out acts that cause fear and terror. I am sure they would take great umbrage at this. I will tell them to their faces given any chance. The guns they could aim at people are no match for the terror they are spreading quietly across this nation in the name of somebody, but it isn’t Jesus.

In the Bible there is the story of “The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.” With a huge crowd gathered and little to eat, the disciples despair at feeding all of them. Jesus takes 5 loaves and 2 fishes and tells the disciples to break them up and distribute them. Suddenly there is enough to feed everyone with some left over. I have always interpreted this as a way that Jesus got people to share what they had brought with them that was unseen. They realized that there were others without, and they began to give part of what they had away. It wasn’t a magic trick in which Jesus created food out of thin air. It was a different type of miracle in which he got people to think of others in a different way and help them.

The Christian Terrorists have frightened everyone so badly that they are closed up and holding on to what they have for dear life. Many people who would normally be more giving can’t hear anything but fear. Fear makes people small and wary. They only want to deal with what and who they know well. These people draw into ever more tighter and harder circles. This cycle needs to be broken so that we are truly more like the America we have been at times. We have been willing to help others. Yes, I know that there are those who aren’t like that at any time. There always have been and always will be. However, the number of people who display that chinchy attitude is growing by leaps and bounds.

Those who claim to be Christians while spouting hate and fear and who do have what they need and more better buy some needles. Then they need to spend a lot of time practicing trying to get through the eye.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24)
I believe there are many people who fall into this category, and they all don’t have to be millionaires.

Thomas Jefferson said,” I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." I believe that is an elegant way of saying what goes around comes around. If I believe in anything, that is one tenet. The other is the Golden Rule. When justice does come around and it will in some form, it is going to make being thrown under a bus look like a fender bender. I always told my Mama that the problem with this belief is that I wanted to be around to see it. We don’t always get that satisfaction. *sigh* (I'm sure I will get my share too.)

So there you have another jeremiad from me. I am tired of the shite I hear and see 24/7. I want those people labeled as Christian terrorists because in my mind that is what they are. America is no more a Christian nation than it is made of jello. It is becoming more and more a country that is unrecognizable from the one that was founded. There are probably so many people spinning in their graves, the Earth is being thrown off its axis.

As my kitteh would say, “MEH!”